FreeBSD Man Pages

MBLEN(3) FreeBSD Library Functions Manual MBLEN(3)
NAMEmblen -- get number of bytes in a character
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS#include <stdlib.h>
intmblen(constchar*mbchar, size_tnbytes);
DESCRIPTION
The mblen() function computes the length in bytes of a multibyte charac-
ter mbchar according to the current conversion state. Up to nbytes bytes
are examined.
A call with a null mbchar pointer returns nonzero if the current locale
requires shift states, zero otherwise; if shift states are required, the
shift state is reset to the initial state.
RETURN VALUES
If mbchar is NULL, the mblen() function returns nonzero if shift states
are supported, zero otherwise.
Otherwise, if mbchar is not a null pointer, mblen() either returns 0 if
mbchar represents the null wide character, or returns the number of bytes
processed in mbchar, or returns -1 if no multibyte character could be
recognized or converted. In this case, mblen()'s internal conversion
state is undefined.
ERRORS
The mblen() function will fail if:
[EILSEQ] An invalid multibyte sequence was detected.
[EINVAL] The internal conversion state is not valid.
SEE ALSOmbrlen(3), mbtowc(3), multibyte(3)STANDARDS
The mblen() function conforms to ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (``ISO C99'').
FreeBSD 10.1 April 11, 2004 FreeBSD 10.1